The previous Windows 10 update, the Creators Update, was given a very slow rollout as Microsoft sought to avoid problems faced in last year's Anniversary Update. Five months after its release, it was only on two thirds of Windows 10 machines, and now, at what is likely to be its peak, it's on three quarters of Windows 10 systems. The Anniversary Update itself is still installed on 17 percent of machines. In contrast, the Anniversary Update was on some 92 percent of Windows 10 devices when the Creators Update shipped.

Microsoft's phased rollout approach distributes the update to systems using hardware and software configurations known to work, incrementally adding new configurations as more real-world data about hardware and software compatibility issues is collected and addressed. The company is believed to have a larger body of tested, known configurations to enable a faster deployment.

The AdDuplex data also shows that Microsoft's own Surfaces are largely well ahead of the curve when it comes to Fall Creators Update adoption, demonstrating the skew between systems that have been validated on the update and those that haven't. A hair over 20 percent of Surface Books are on the update, with 19 percent of 2017 Surface Pros also upgraded. The very first Surface Pro model sits at just 5.9 percent, and oddly, the brand new Surface Laptop is also something of a laggard at 8.3 percent.